A Record of My Own
Some time last week, I accidentally found a site to watch Chinese TV series online and landed on 金粉世家 (a word-for-word translation is Golden Powder Century Family). It was a series with 40 episodes, 45-50 minutes per episode. I watched about 15 episodes on Thu, Fri (staying up until 12am or 1am at most) and Sat morning. On Saturday night, after a BBQ party and fireworks watching at Central Park, I started watching the last 25 episodes shortly before 11:00pm and finished Episode 40 at 8:30pm Sunday. Twenty-one hours STRAIGHT (on a screen of 3x5). A record that I didn't intend to set and probably will never intend to break.
In that 21 hrs, I might have spent about half an hour to cook breakfast for kids on Sunday, and took less than 10 min total for two short trips to bathroom and scrounging for snacks in the house to feed myself. For the rest of the time, I stared at the computer screen, downloading Episode n+1 and watching Episode n continuously with minimal food and drink intake and no sleep, leaving kids to Ian and Wii games. In the end, I had numb legs, sore rear cheeks, and a broken heart.
It was a TV series based on a famous novel back in 1930s. Luck or not, I never had the chance to come across the book, and for some reason never had the intention to look for it, either, although I love reading Chinese classics. The story was set around 1890-1930s and focused on a prestigious family named Gold (one husband, one wife, two concubines, four sons and three daughters-in-law, and four daughters and one son-in-law), and their stories with other families whose sons or daughters were involved with the Gold's. The husband, i.e. the master of this Gold household, was a prime minister who was constantly in power struggle and was eventually dead due to a stroke after losing power. So there were multiple lines of stories about family relationship, political sabotage, and of course, love triangles. It was one of the characters involved in one of the love triangles who dragged me into this zombie zone. In the end, this glorious family collapsed, people died or got lost, love vanished, and gold turned into dust.
In that 21 hrs, I might have spent about half an hour to cook breakfast for kids on Sunday, and took less than 10 min total for two short trips to bathroom and scrounging for snacks in the house to feed myself. For the rest of the time, I stared at the computer screen, downloading Episode n+1 and watching Episode n continuously with minimal food and drink intake and no sleep, leaving kids to Ian and Wii games. In the end, I had numb legs, sore rear cheeks, and a broken heart.
It was a TV series based on a famous novel back in 1930s. Luck or not, I never had the chance to come across the book, and for some reason never had the intention to look for it, either, although I love reading Chinese classics. The story was set around 1890-1930s and focused on a prestigious family named Gold (one husband, one wife, two concubines, four sons and three daughters-in-law, and four daughters and one son-in-law), and their stories with other families whose sons or daughters were involved with the Gold's. The husband, i.e. the master of this Gold household, was a prime minister who was constantly in power struggle and was eventually dead due to a stroke after losing power. So there were multiple lines of stories about family relationship, political sabotage, and of course, love triangles. It was one of the characters involved in one of the love triangles who dragged me into this zombie zone. In the end, this glorious family collapsed, people died or got lost, love vanished, and gold turned into dust.